Rigging Runner

The reward is built backwards from how a one-drop normally gets played. Most aggressive one-mana creatures want to come down first, before there's any board to attack into; this one pays you for already having a board, for having already swung. Because the counter is placed as the creature enters (a replacement effect, not something that fires off the stack), it only appears if you attacked earlier that turn, which means the card is at its best on turn two or three, played after combat, arriving as a 2/2 first striker rather than the 1/1 its casting cost suggests. That's the tension: it asks an aggressive deck to hold a one-drop until later in the turn to get the upside, and a deck fast enough to have already attacked is exactly the deck happy to make that trade. First strike is what makes the counter matter beyond the stat line. A 2/2 first striker blocks and trades up against two- and three-drops it has no business beating, and on offense it pushes through chump blockers without dying. Goblin Pirate is the kind of double-typing that exists to feed two tribal hooks at once, but the design lives entirely in the raid-and-first-strike interaction: a cheap beater that rewards a deck for committing to the aggressive plan early, then keeps paying out in combat once it's down.